A set of mental skills and socio-emotional dispositions—including self-regulation of emotion and attention, self-representations, and prosocial traits like empathy and compassion—are central to 21st-century education. These qualities can be strengthened through systematic contemplative practice, which induces plastic changes in brain function and structure, supporting prosocial behavior and academic success in young people. The authors call for focused programmatic research to determine which forms and frequencies of practice are most efficacious for which children and adolescents, and to document the neural changes induced.
A nine-week compassion meditation program reduced mind wandering to neutral topics and increased self-directed caring behaviors among 51 adults. More frequent meditation practice was linked to less mind wandering to unpleasant topics and more mind wandering to pleasant topics, and both changes were associated with increased caring behaviors for oneself and others. Overall, mind wandering did not mediate the relationship between meditation frequency and caring behaviors when all topics were combined, but topic-specific mind wandering did play a role.
A randomized clinical trial compared Mindfulness-Oriented Recovery Enhancement (MORE) with supportive psychotherapy for people with both chronic pain and opioid misuse. Participants who received MORE showed greater increases in self-transcendence during a mindfulness task, which led to stronger feelings of universal love. Those increased feelings of love, in turn, predicted lower opioid craving and reduced odds of opioid misuse over follow-ups up to nine months. The findings suggest that mindfulness practices may work partly by fostering self-transcendent experiences that enhance love and compassion, with potential benefits for reducing addictive behavior.
First-year medical students who participated in Compassionatomy, a program integrating compassion training into anatomy dissection labs, reported a stronger sense of connection with body donors over the academic year. Connection was higher after sessions that included compassion training than after those without it. Greater connection was linked to more positive emotional feelings but not to changes in arousal. Engagement with compassion exercises during sessions increased over time, and students practiced more contemplative exercises outside the lab in weeks following compassion training. Empathy levels remained stable across the year and were similar to those of a previous cohort that did not receive the program.
An 8-week compassion meditation class led participants to write more optimistic letters to a convicted murderer compared to mindfulness meditation, an active control, or no class. This effect was partly explained by participants valuing positivity more. No significant differences were found for empathy, sympathy, or forgiveness expressed in the letters. The study suggests that compassion meditation may specifically boost optimism toward unrelatable targets.